…the power in a pen
I’ve looked death in the eyes a few times over.
Though it had the face of a ballpoint pen.
It is direct in its dissertation detailing the life laid before the paper.
It tells of every inhale and footstep,
I am not friends with death, it has not punctured my page with a period and yet,
I have stared down the ballpoint
barrel of a pen.
I have seen the indent a eulogy engraves against paper and skin,
Felt the paper cut rush of pain pierce my ears as a time of death rings
A finality that only a dot of punctuation can procure.
I’ve seen the heel of death go round the hallway corner.
Held a white coat with pink stitching over its shoulder.
Like all things, it too shall pass.
I’ve seen the face of death refracted at me through a mirage of funerals.
Death does not write eulogies, it merely organizes them.
Eulogies are usually entrusted to the poets.
The authors and inscribers,
It is left to those of us with the least to say.
The most to relay.
The ballpoint pen is left for the hand that
Holds a story like a newborn baby,
It is dedicated to grocery lists and life lessons,
Lamenting to lost loves and half-priced ground beef.
It is the simple thing in life.
And the poets, the authors and essayists.
They are an armed task force,
Locked, loaded and leading the pencil lead down a spiral notebook of narration,
The poets, the authors and essayists.
They cocoon all that they are, that they love, onto an 8×11 page and in the
Margins, we exist. We peer into the minds they have written for us,
The poets, the authors and essayists.
They are father’s who tell midnight tales of strength, they are siblings giving
Recounts of who done it and the smoking gun is left in the footnotes.
The mother’s, oh the mother’s. They tell us all to wipe our feet, we are dirtying the doorway with this clutter.
They hold the excess of who we were in the index of their intentions.
I’ve seen death and it is nothing to a mother’s womb, to the birth of a new story.
She reloaded that pen and it shot something into the crowd.
Punctured the perception of the people,
And a God existed somewhere in there. He always does,
In the Dedications or prologue, in the Genesis of it all.
In the flow of the pen and rise of words, accepting ink-stained wings has never been a form of heartache for the ballpoint pen-maker.
Creation and acceptance is no big thing for a God.
Death held on to a white coat with pink stitching.
My author, my mother, said it was my sister’s favorite color.
Like all things, this too, shall pass.
I’ve looked death in the eyes a few times.
But it’s never been able to see the power in a pen.
Victoria Rollins is a 10th-grade high school student. She is a Kansas City-based writer. She enjoys painting, participating in community activities, and writing poetry. She plans to pursue a career in race studies with an emphasis on psychology.
